


Scars

by orphan_account



Category: The Murder Chat (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 22:25:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13820706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lorelei has a lot of scars and only one real friend.





	Scars

Lorelei finds himself full of scars.

Some of them are physical, sure, his mother favoured physical punishment once his father died. And occasionally before, whenever she thought his father wouldn’t see. From lashings to that dreaded poker, always sitting at the side of the gently flickering fire.

He rolls his shoulders at the memory, feels the scars there pull taut. Fibrous tissue, pale raised lines that seem pearlescent. He's seen glimpses of them in the reflections in windows when changing, sometimes. He doesn't think that Gizzard has seen them. Maybe he has. Depends whether the wizard had watched him change.

Ah, but he has many more scars in the form of mental issues.

 

There's his aggressive hatred of fate, for one. If he dug into himself just a bit, he could trace the scar like a path back to the Paladin training. Back to  _ 'Don't let us down, Lorelei. Don't embarrass us.'  _

He shakes the words from his mind and pulls his nightshirt over his head. It’s one of his newer buys, second hand and picked from a market stall. It’s yellow, and the subtleties of that choice escape Lore a little, if he thought on it he’d probably understand. But he doesn’t think, so he doesn’t understand.   
“Lore?” Gizzard asks tentatively, knows the telltale signs of his friend’s relapses. Lore forces a smile. He wants this one, and no shiny would-be king is taking it from him.   
“S’all good.” He tells him.    
Gizzard seems placated, slips out of the hall and back to the bed. When Lore goes back, he expects the lamp will be extinguished and Gizzard probably asleep.

Stills the jump in his chest. Even after all these months, the thought of sleeping close to someone else… well, to Gizzard, specifically, it jumps him.   
  


He returns to tracing a mental brush over those scars.    
He can’t trust. And that seems silly to think, given that he lays his life willingly to Gizzard every time he closes his eyes, or sleeps by him, or turns his back. By any accounts, Gizzard could kill him with a few arcane words and a hand gesture. Only a fool trusts a wizard.

But he guesses he’s a fool.   
  


The others though, he can’t bring himself to trust. He goes over them one by one in his mind.   
Malachite. Anyone that trusted that rock-brained fool was a fool themself. Was there even coherent thought in that green skull, aside from “It moves, flirt with it” or...what?    
Lore frowns at the thought of Malachite. It was him that got them into their first fight. They’d killed people. They’d killed a horse. Gizzard had eaten the horse.   
He shakes the affectionate smile from his face, revolted at himself. Someone had died. Multiple. He couldn’t help the awe that he had felt seeing  _ his _ Gizzard one-shot a guard, though. The wizard was growing much more powerful with each passing day.

He hears flute notes from the bedroom.

Qille, he can’t really… fault. She’s a little childish, and Lore doesn’t much care for the young because he has no idea how to deal with them. But he has Gizzard for that problem. She’s trying. There’s no capacity for trust, even if he was capable of it.   
Rasvim… rubs him up weirdly. Maybe it’s the fatherly nature, the responsibility, or the archery thing, he just unsettles Lore on a deep level, and that’s really the start and end of it.   
Alinor is pretentious, and his cat scares Refund- he looks round at the thought of her and spots her roosting beside Barnaby, almost close enough that their feathers would brush if they both inhaled at the same time.   
Gizzards soft flute tune changes and Refund untucks her head, stretches the wing on the side Barnaby isn’t on, and chitters along with him quietly.   
Lore breathes in to dispel the haze of rose-tone affection he feels at the sound, and goes back to categorising the ragtag band they’ve found themselves involved with.   
Romaia seems… decent. If Lore was to trust anyone, it would likely be her. Eldritch Blast? A Warlock thing. There’s definitely something that she’s not telling them, and secrets mean bargaining. Maybe he can guile something out of her, something to hold hostage if she wants to hurt him, like so, so many must. He doesn’t want to force it from her, if he can hold her trust that gives him a step up.  _ But _ if she trusts him, she’ll give him her information willingly...   
He finds himself humming, and his mind throbs, lilts and flows. He blinks, and a flash, a smoke of light drifts out of his hands and dispels. Gizzard is back at the hall, and he’s blinking too.   
“Please stop casting on me, if you need water, you can just ask.” and there’s a flash of white, sharp teeth in a grin. Lore grins back, he’s infectious.    
“Sorry, I’ll be through in a minute.”   
“Please. I want to practice a duet before we sleep.” He winks, disappears, and Lore lists the remaining party members.   
He thinks about the cat. He doesn’t like the cat. Too demanding, too strange, he can’t wrap his head around a  _ talking cat.  _ With  _ wings _ . Nope.   
And Salil. Ah, yes, whilst he can’t trust the pirate- and that’s probably a good decision for anyone, not just him- he does  _ like him _ . Something in the lines of races looked down upon, and probably why he took to Romaia too, he feels a kinship to Salil that he can’t explain.

He stands up, breathing, and feeling better than when he sat. The scars on his mind still pull taut when he tries to comprehend bonding with new people, but he finds that Gizzard eases them.   
He sits next to the wizard and picks up his lyre.   
“I’ve a song I’d like to teach you, Gizzard,” he says, a gentle smile on his face, “It’s called…” and he pauses, hasn’t thought of a title yet. He thinks a moment too long, and Gizzard elbows him.   
“Just play the song.”   
Lore smiles, his fingers drift to the strings and pluck, easy as breathing.   
“ _ Alone, regality wrought in gold… _ ”


End file.
